Tens of Thousands Stand with Hobby Lobby

Tens of thousands of Americans across the nation today are showing their support for Hobby Lobby, the Christian-owned company now facing millions of dollars in fines for refusing to comply with Obamacare’s contraception mandate.

The grassroots “Standing with Hobby Lobby” was launched through social media and has since been embraced by religious liberty groups and Christians nationwide. Organizers say it’s an opportunity to support the company “and its owners’ brave stand against the anti-conscience mandate’s assault on religious freedom.

“This is not just about Hobby Lobby–this is about you,” said former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. “If Hobby Lobby is forced to eat the ‘king’s meat’ and ‘bow on their knees’ to a human government in direct conflict with their fundamentals of faith, then how long will it be before they come for you and your family?”

The appreciation day is similar to one Huckabee helped launch to support Chick-fil-A after that Christian-owned company came under attack from militant homosexual groups.

“Support Hobby Lobby, a company that obeys God rather than men,” the Family Research Council declared.

Hobby Lobby, a national arts and crafts chain with more than 500 stores in 41 states, is now facing $1.3 million in daily fines after Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor denied their emergency request to block enforcement of the Obamacare contraception mandate.

The company is owned by the Green family, devout, evangelical Christians. They believe “it is by God’s grace and provision that Hobby Lobby has endured” and they seek to honor God by operating their company in a manner consistent with Biblical principles.”

The family believes the Obamacare mandate to provide the morning-after and week-after pills is a violation of their religious convictions.

“To remain true to their faith, it is not their intention as a company, to pay for abortion-inducing drugs,” Becket Fund attorney Kyle Duncan wrote in a statement.

Duncan said the company would continue to provide health insurance for its employees while they fight the government in court.

“The Green family respects the religious convictions of all Americans, including those who do not agree with them,” the Becket Fund said in a statement. “All they are asking is for the government to give them the same respect by not forcing them to violate their religious beliefs.”

There are now 42 separate lawsuits changing the mandate, the Becket Fund said.

The Green Family

Conservatives praised Hobby Lobby for standing by their convictions.

“God bless this company,” columnist Michelle Malkin told Fox News. “It’s incumbent upon every conservative who believes in freedom of religion and freedom of conscience to support those businesses that are standing up and taking the slings and arrows of this discriminatory administration.”

“This is the most egregious violation of religious liberty that I have ever seen,” wrote columnist Denny Burk. “The first line of the Bill of Rights says this: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ Obamacare prohibits the free exercise of the owners of Hobby Lobby. Who’s next?”

Conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham said President Obama “must step in to stop this madness.”

“It turns out as many feared, the president’s religious exemption to the contraception mandate is so narrow as to be meaningless,” she said on Fox News. “Unless you employ and serve only those of your same religious faith you don’t receive an exemption. So under that standard, Jesus himself would not qualify. This is unconscionable and unconstitutional.”

Ingraham pointed out that in a previous case Sotomayor ruled in favor of a Muslim inmate who was denied Ramadan meals. She held that the meal was subjectively important to the inmate’s practice of Islam.